Yesterday, I was in Stop and Shop. I was in a hurry so instead of going to a regular check-out lane with a cashier, I went to the self-checkout.

          I’d already scanned a bunch of stuff when I figured that maybe I should put a couple of items in a bag on the shelf at the end of the counter, so the loading area didn’t get too full. I’d no sooner done this when a store clerk came over to help me bag. I thanked him and kept scanning when suddenly, I saw him make a lunging movement. He looked at me, his expression impossible to read. “Ma’m, your soda is okay, but your tomato sauce isn’t,” he announced. I looked past the end of the counter and saw a bottle of soda rolling around on the linoleum and a jumbo jar of Ragu, which had crashed to the floor and exploded into a widely splattered pool of sauce.

          “Oh, man,” I said to the clerk. “How did that even happen?” He hesitated, which made me immediately think I might be to blame. After all, I hadn’t seen what actually transpired. “Did I do that?” I asked, just as the manager came over.

          “Kyle!” barked the manager. “What did you do this time?”

          This time? Now I knew that for Kyle, this type of event was not unprecedented, pertinent information I could really have used ten seconds earlier. I saw a look wash over Kyle’s face. Calculation? Relief? “The lady had a little accident with her sauce,” he told the supervisor. “Looks like a crime scene, doesn’t it?” he chuckled softly, at the same time furtively glancing around for witnesses.

          Now I was on to him. I looked at the ledge where the sauce and the soda had been placed, which was deep and perfectly capable of holding them, but by now, Kyle had taken my moment of self-blame and was sprinting with it. Plus, Kyle wasted no time in telling everyone- the guy who came to mop up the mess, the sour People’s Bank Manager at the front of the store, the little brat who kept trying to step in the sauce- that it was my fault. Kyle, a guy whose job security rested on finding a ready and willing scapegoat, had lucked out.

          I let the whole thing play out, because the story had built up a momentum that felt unstoppable but essentially harmless. After all, I had far less to lose than Kyle. I fought off the urge to expose Kyle’s deception and instead, apologized to the guy mopping up the floor. He looked up at me, and in that moment, I knew the truth: not only was I innocent, but my innocence was less important than cleaning the tomato sauce off the floor.